


Pick up the pieces

by littlelooneyluna



Category: robron
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Set after: 2/11/2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 18:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelooneyluna/pseuds/littlelooneyluna
Summary: Seb goes, Robert and Aaron struggle through Robert's decision





	Pick up the pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I am a massive fan of the little porridge monster and just had to write something after the episode!

The bitterness between them is there, it howls in this way that can only make Robert want to disappear. He wants to hide away from the way he’s hollowed Aaron by it all, from the way there is this darkness that he placed there.

For Seb, for Rebecca, for himself in so many ways and that is what hurts the most. 

That  _and_ Aaron hardly meeting his eye.

He’s nowhere to be found, had just walked slowly back into the flat to grab his coat and then left again like he had turned deaf, like suddenly Robert begging him to listen didn’t have any effect on him.

The bed’s cold without him, that much is clear and the moonlight shines on Aaron’s side of the bed like it’s just trying to mock Robert. Like it’s trying to punish him or something, show him that there’s someone else he’s lost.

Something raises in his chest at the thought of that, the thought of having lost Seb in some way. He hasn’t, he knows deep down that he hasn’t really lost his son and just thinking about little Gracie is enough to settle that. But hes lost what they had, hes lost the way things were for those precious fleeting months. 

And he cant take it back now.

The sound of feet making him sit up and he’s waiting for Aaron to come in, grab the spare blanket and sleep on the sofa or something. Which is exactly what they need, to be separated in their grief about everything. 

But the sound passes the room and Robert knows suddenly where Aaron is. So he follows him, sees him standing about Seb’s cot, holding Jeff the Giraffe in one hand and the baby monitor in the other like he cant put them down. 

He’s sniffling, back towards Robert and the blinds opened wide enough so that Robert can see how long and drawn out his husband’s shadow is, it makes him sadder for some reason.

And then he gulps, breathes out. “Aaron?”

He can hear Aaron take in a breath before he turns slowly and then stops, just looks at Robert over his shoulder and then turns back again.

“Shout at me, blame me, do – do what you want okay? But just know that I tried to do what was best, I tried to –”

“He doesn’t get off to sleep without him.” Aaron says slowly, almost whispering as he turns around and waves the giraffe in front of Robert’s face. He has a ghost of a smile on his face and then it fades evenly. “He smells like our bed, like us, ‘cause you were sleepin’ on it the other night without knowing, your back still hurting from that?” Robert doesn’t say anything, just feels his heart beating out of his chest. “So he knows to get off to sleep ‘cause it smells like us, like – like the people who see him every single day, who love him –”

“So does Rebecca.” Robert says, because she does love, he wouldn’t have let Seb leave with her if he didn’t know that.

“So did my mum. But it wasn’t enough, just lovin’ your kid ain’t reason to get to ignore everything else.” This, the way Aaron pushes his chest out, waves a hand in the air as he speaks, is what Robert was waiting for. 

That terrifying sense of betrayal.

“You can hardly compare.”

“But  _you_ were. You were comparing how important your mum was to you to – to how important Rebecca must be to Seb but that’s  _different_. He’s a baby, you were old enough to –”

Robert scrunches his eyes up, shakes his head and sees his mum. He sort of hates Aaron with all he has for bringing it up, that massive giant elephant in the room.

_Seb can’t lose his mum._

It drums through his head and aches and aches and aches.

“Please don’t.” He says, head hanging, eyes watering again. “Aaron, it was an impossible decision. Whatever I said, someone would have got hurt by it.”

Aaron scoffs. “But you made it without me anyway didn’t ya? You and Rebecca. Fuck what Aaron thinks about Seb, he hated him this time last year so –”

And sometimes, just sometimes things are always bound to come out in arguments that make Robert feel like there is absolutely nothing he can do about what Aaron allows himself to think.

Allows his mind to go.

It hurts, stings so badly as he shakes his head. “ _No_.” He says. “It wasn’t like that at all, we – I knew you’d –”

“Convince ya otherwise yeah?” Aaron shouts, blinks out tears that fall down his face and make Robert want to hide. “You selfish prick.” He says, in this way that makes Robert’s heart sink because he’s heard that voice, he’s heard how deflated and crushed Aaron has sounded because of what Robert has done to him, and yet heard that love still there. 

It’s the most bittersweet thing in the world.

But it’s always been there, that hate and love mixed up in one, love almost always trumping that hate until –

“Please don’t hate me for this.” 

But Aaron just clings onto the giraffe and suddenly Robert sees Chas and he feels sick.

“I didn’t even get a cuddle.” Aaron’s shaking his head and trying to catch his breath as he cries and Robert hates himself for thinking this would be easier, letting Rebecca go, letting her be happy, giving Seb all the family he has, not letting Aaron let everything  _else_ make him so adamantly against Seb going anywhere.”You waited until you let him go, until you left him with her, until they were driving away happily ever after to let me know what you’d done.”

Robert blinks quickly, waves a hand over his face. “I didn’t want you to get –”

“What? Upset? I suppose I ain’t meant to am I?”

Robert scowls. “That’s not fair, that isn’t fair. Stop makin’ me the bad guy.” He shouts back but Aaron just scoffs, ignores him.

“Or Liv,  _God_ , did you have the decency to tell her or did she work it out herself?”

Robert bites his lip, she’d been upset, he’d seen her try and hide it by making them both a cup of tea, running the water a little longer than usual and whilst the kettle was already boiling. He’d seen her cry and told her he was sorry but she was quiet, like she knew it wasn’t her place to fight for Seb. 

And that hurt even more.

Because he was her family, he still fucking is.

“I told her.”

Aaron nods, blows out a breath and stares down at the giraffe again. “How could ya, really, how could you just give him up like that without even letting me know?” He says. after so many seconds of nothing. 

And Robert just sighs, feels something get lodged in his throat as he speaks. “It wasn’t easy, you have to know that okay? But she’s his mum, and she loves him, and I couldn’t –”

“Let your son go without a mum.” Aaron whispers, strokes a hand across the soft fabric of the giraffe. “I thought we were great with him though you know? Didn’t you? Do you think she could have done a better job, is that it?”

Robert suddenly moves forward, tries to reach out. “Aaron, you – you’re the best daddy in the world, it wasn’t you okay?” 

“Don’t say that to me. Don’t you fuckin’ dare when you’ve let him go.” Aaron shouts, frowns. “’Cause it doesn’t matter now does it, not to him. Ross’ll be more of a dad to him than I ever will. Ross.” He almost chuckles and Robert’s jaw tenses.

“No way.” He says suddenly, shaking his head. “Aaron, he loves ya.”

Aaron looks up. “And I love him, like my own, but at the end of the day it didn’t matter. And I wish he was mine but he isn’t is he?”

“You’re his dad Aaron.” Robert says seriously, chin trembling. “He’s yours.”

Aaron winces. “Not when it mattered.” He says, so finally that Robert nearly trips over how much it aches him. “And I never will be.”

He goes to leave, places the monitor down like he has to remind himself to leave it behind, break the force of habit. Bur Robert places a hand on his chest. 

“This, it doesn’t change how much we love him or he loves us. I should have told ya but I was so scared and I didn’t – I was just tryna make it all okay. I was really trying to be a good person for once in my life and –”

“I hope you feel like one.” Aaron says drily, pushes Robert’s arm away from him. “And I hope you can live with yourself.”

Robert shudders, frowning, confused and hurt and –

“With you I can, without you hating me I could. Aaron, please tell me you don’t hate me.”

Only Aaron just leaves, and he watches him disappear downstairs with the spare blanket.

–

He doesn’t sleep, just keeps looking at pictures of Seb on his phone and re-reading the text Rebecca had sent hours ago.

Apparently all is well. 

He wants it to settle something in his chest only it doesn’t. 

He shuffles further down on the bed and sighs, this sudden awareness setting in, the one that says he’s alone.

But the door goes, the hall light comes flooding in and Aaron stands there with the blanket over his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything as he sets it down and climbs into the bed, hesitantly pulls the covers over him and looks at Robert with these heavy eyes. 

“I could never hate ya.” Aaron says, and Robert’s whole body liquefies as he hears him speak. He gravitates towards Aaron without warning, buries his head in Aaron’s chest and shudders a little. He feels Aaron tentatively press a kiss to his head, feels his anger, his pain, but that love is there too just like always. 

Robert keeps saying he’s sorry, repeats it as Aaron holds him and then he pulls away. It makes Robert panic a little, and then Aaron is holding Jeff again, squeezing at the little Giraffe and then placing it between them both.

“So we’re both not alone in this.”

This day, this feeling, this sadness.

Robert nods, can’t help but drift off now that Aaron’s right here.


End file.
